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TracingWoodgrains  the leaves that are green turn to brown  1yr ago (furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com)   2029 thread views

How One Woman’s Children (n=2) Acquired Absolute Pitch

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Many of you are familiar with some of my writing on early childhood education. Here, someone I’ve chatted with explains at some length her process for helping her children acquire absolute pitch. This is something possible for almost everyone during a narrow window of time; it and similar time-sensitive skills are worth serious consideration if you are a parent of a young child.

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This might just be a matter of what people think of the usefulness of perfect pitch. Perhaps I'm just missing some fundamental human experience but I really have never "gotten" what the big deal is with music. I enjoy it, I have songs and artists that I quite like. But the passion with which some people devote themselves to it has always seemed so alien to me. If not for the premium society puts on it I couldn't differentiate it's importance to, like, juggling ability. To compare perfect pitch to literacy to me is like comparing the benefit of having your kid be able to walk to being double jointed in one finger or the ability to very accurately guess the humidity of a room. Like cool, that's probably useful for something I guess but really, you think these things are comparable? I can barely even remember what pitch means most of the time.

Do you think something like the Harry Potter novels and the whole celebrity culture formed around them is useful for something? I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, and I can fully agree with one part of what you said: "the passion with which some people devote themselves to it has always seemed so alien to me"

I, in general, dislike fanaticism - particularly regarding pop culture figures. Although I'll say minus the weirdly fanatical groups there is some value in common touchstones like Harry Potter and other successful memes even if HP in particular is more well suited for children and young teens. Fascination with children's media well into adulthood is its own separate problem. It's good that I can describe someone as "Like Dumbledore" and have practically everyone in my generation know what I mean. It's less good that many thirty year old women see the whole world through the simple good vs evil lens that a children's book hung a coming of age story on.

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